Paradise (73 page)

Meredith's heart sank at Stuart's flimsy rationale. "I can't bet my father's life on anything as flimsy as all that. And I'll tell you something," she added sadly. "Matt picked lawyers who think exactly like he does. You could be right when you say Matt doesn't want to hurt me personally, but you’re wrong about what he's after. I figured it out just as we left." She drew a shaky breath. "Matt isn't after me. He doesn't even know me. What he wants is revenge against my father, and he's figured out two ways to get it: Either he takes my father to trial, or he gets his revenge an even sweeter, better way—by using me. I'm the sweetest revenge of all. Forcing my father to see us together after all these years, making him think there's a chance we'll stay together—to Matt that's an eye for an eye. So," she said, putting her hand on his sleeve, "will you do me a favor when you take this in to him?"

Stuart nodded, covering her hand. "What do you want me to do?"

"Try to make Matt agree that this bargain and our marriage will remain a secret. He probably won't agree —that will deprive him of some of his pleasure, some of his revenge, but try."

"I will."

When she left, Stuart flipped to the second page, wrote in the terms he hoped to get Farrell to agree to, then he straightened. Rather than politely knock on Farrell's office door, Stuart opened it. When he saw that Farrell wasn't there, he headed quietly toward the conference room, hoping to catch him off guard, to see something— some expression—that would give a clue about the man's real feelings.

The draperies had been drawn back in the conference room, and Farrell was standing at the windows, his drink in one hand, staring out at the night skyline, his jaw rigid. He looked, Stuart thought with some satisfaction, like a man who had just suffered an enormous defeat and was trying to come to grips with it. In fact, standing in the vast conference room, surrounded by all the trappings of his wealth and power, there was an incongruous quality of isolation in the way he bent his head and stared at the glass in his hand. He lifted his glass then and tossed down the drink as if trying to wash away a bitter taste, and Stuart spoke. "Should I have knocked?" Farrell's head jerked around, and even in that unguarded instant of surprise, Stuart wasn't certain whether he saw profound relief—or merely tremendous satisfaction, so quickly did Farrell's guard go up. He'd been fairly easy to read when Meredith was present—now Stuart watched him become aloof and completely inscrutable as he flicked a glance at the papers in Stuart's hand to confirm what they were, then started toward the bar.

"I was about to have another drink," Farrell said, showing no apparent eagerness to get his hands on the signed documents. "Would you care for one, or would you rather get down to business?"

He sounded as if it didn't matter to him which option Stuart chose, but Stuart seized the opportunity to try to discover some clue to the man's feelings about Meredith. "The business part won't take long," he said, following him over to the bar. "I'll take you up on the offer of a drink."

"Another Perrier?" Farrell asked, stepping into the mirrored half circle.

"Bourbon," Stuart said succinctly. "Straight up."

That earned a dubious look from Farrell. "Really?"

"Would I lie to a clever, ruthless mogul like yourself?" Stuart said dryly.

Farrell flicked a sarcastic glance at him and reached for the decanter of bourbon. "You'd lie to the devil himself for the sake of a client."

Surprised and annoyed by the partial truth of that assessment, Stuart put his briefcase down and laid the documents on the bar. "You're right in this instance," he admitted. "Meredith and I are friends. In fact," Stuart continued, striving for a more relaxed atmosphere of confidence, "I used to have a huge crush on her."

"I know."

Surprised again, and half convinced Farrell was lying, Stuart said, "Considering that I don't think Meredith knew it, I have to say you're remarkably well informed. What else do you know?"

"About you?" Farrell asked casually.

When Stuart nodded, Farrell began fixing his own drink. Dropping ice cubes into his glass, he launched into a brusque, dispassionate recitation of Stuart's personal history that left him completely astonished and a little chilled. "You're the oldest son in a family of five," Farrell said. "Your grandfather and his two brothers founded the law firm where you're now a senior partner, carrying on with the family tradition of practicing law. At the age of twenty-three you graduated first in your class from
Harvard
Law
School
—also a family tradition—where you distinguished yourself by being president of your class and making
Law Review.
When you graduated, you wanted to work in the district attorney's office, specializing in prosecuting cases of landlord abuse, but you yielded to family pressure and joined the family firm instead, where you handle cases for wealthy corporate clients, mostly from your own social circle.

"You hate corporate law, but you have a genius for it; you're a tough negotiator, a brilliant strategist, and a good diplomat unless your personal feelings are involved, as they were today. You're thorough and you're meticulous, but you're lousy with juries because you try to sway them with dry facts instead of emotional logic. For that reason, you usually do the pretrial preparation, then you hand jury cases over to an associate and supervise them...."

Farrell paused in that recitation to hand Stuart his drink. "Shall I go on?"

"By all means, if there's more," Stuart replied a little stiffly.

Picking up his own glass, Farrell took a swallow and when Stuart had done likewise, he said, "You're thirty-three, heterosexual, with a penchant for fast cars, which you don't indulge, and a love of sailing, which you do. When you were twenty-two, you thought you were in love with a girl from
Melrose Park whom you met at the beach, but she was from a blue-collar Italian family, and the cultural gap was too wide for both of you to bridge. You both agreed to call it off. Seven years later you fell in love with Meredith, but she couldn't reciprocate, so you became friends. Two years ago your family put on a push to marry you off to Georgina Gibbons, whose daddy is also a socialite lawyer, and the two of you got engaged, but you called that one off. You're worth about eighteen million right now, mostly in blue chip stocks, and you'll inherit another fifteen when your grandfather dies—less if he continues his junkets to
Monte Carlo, where he nearly always loses."

Pausing in that recitation that had Stuart trapped somewhere between amazement and anger, Farrell gestured to the sofas near the windows, and Stuart picked up the documents and his drink and followed him there. When he was seated across from him, Farrell said blandly, "Did I leave anything important out?"

"Yes," Stuart replied with a sardonic smile as he lifted his drink in a mocking toast, "what's my favorite color?"

Farrell looked him straight in the eye. "Red."

Stuart choked. "You're right about everything but my thoroughness. Obviously you were better prepared for this confrontation than I was. I'm still waiting for the background check I ordered on you, and it won't be half so complete. I'm amazed and reluctantly impressed."

Farrell shrugged. "You shouldn't be.
Intercorp
owns a credit reporting bureau as well as a forge investigative agency that does a lot of work for multinational corporations."

It struck Stuart as odd that Farrell had said, "
Intercorp
owns," not "I own," as if he felt no real desire to be personally associated with the corporate empire he had created. In Stuart's experience, most entrepreneurs with newly amassed wealth were braggarts who were transparently proud of their accomplishments and embarrassingly eager to remind everyone of what they owned. Stuart had expected something like that of Farrell, particularly because the news media normally portrayed him as a flamboyant, international playboy-tycoon who led the completely sybaritic, richly satisfying life of a modern-day sultan.

Stuart had the feeling that the truth was far from that; that at best, Farrell was a guarded, solitary man who was difficult to get to know. At worst, he was a cold, calculating, unemotional man with a wide streak of ruthlessness and an iron control that was almost chilling. This was undoubtedly how his business adversaries thought of him. "How did you know what my favorite color is?" he asked finally, ready to try again to get a better reading on Farrell. "You didn't get that off a credit report."

"That was a guess," Farrell said dryly. "Your briefcase is maroon and so is your tie. Also, most men like red. Women like blue." For the first time, Farrell actually let his attention stray to the document Stuart had put on the table. "Speaking of women," he said casually, "I gather Meredith signed that."

"She added some conditions," Stuart replied, watching him closely, noting the imperceptible tensing of his adversary's jaw. "She wants the days you mentioned stipulated in the document and she wants it clarified that if you miss one, you can't make it up."

Farrell's expression softened, and even in the subdued lighting Stuart saw amusement glinting in those gray eyes. Amusement and ... pride? He had no time to confirm that, however, because Farrell abruptly got up, walked over to the conference table, and returned with a gold fountain pen he'd left there. When he flipped to the signature page where Stuart had written in the added terms and uncapped the pen, Stuart added, "You'll see that she also wants it agreed that you will not publicly reveal either this marriage of yours or the eleven-week trial
dating period to anyone."

Farrell's eyes narrowed, but just as Stuart opened his mouth to argue for Meredith's terms, Farrell looked down and quickly initialed all three stipulations, then he signed the document and tossed it across the table to Stuart. "Was secrecy your advice," he asked, "or Meredith's idea?"

"Hers," Stuart replied, and then because he was itching to see Farrell's reaction, he added smoothly, "If she'd have taken
my
advice, she would have thrown that agreement in the trash."

Farrell leaned back, studying Stuart with unnerving intensity and something that might have been a glimmer of respect. "If she'd done that," he countered, "she'd have risked her father's health and his good name."

"She wouldn't have risked anything," Stuart contradicted flatly. "You were bluffing." The other man lifted his brows and said nothing, so Stuart pressed harder. "What you're doing is unethical and extreme. Either you're a world-class bastard, or you're insane, or you're in love with her. Which is it?"

"Definitely the first," Farrell replied. "Possibly the second. Possibly all three. You decide."

"I already have."

"Which is it?"

"The first and the third," Stuart replied, suddenly enjoying himself, noting Farrell's slight, reluctant smile at Stuart's unflattering conclusion. "What do you know about Meredith?" Stuart asked after another swallow of his drink, determined to reaffirm his conclusion that Farrell was in love with her.

"Only what I've read in the magazines and newspapers in the last eleven years. I'd rather find out the rest by myself."

For a man who checked out an attorney right down to the size of his shoe, Stuart thought it was meaningful that Farrell, who was supposedly interested only in revenge, hadn't done an equally impersonal background check on Meredith. "Then you don't know the little things about her," Stuart said as he continued watching him over the rim of his glass, "like the fact that in the summer after her freshman year of college there was a rumor going around that she'd had some sort of tragic love affair, and that's why she wouldn't go out with anyone. You, of course, were probably inadvertently the cause of that." He paused, watching the flare of intense interest and emotion that Farrell belatedly tried to conceal by lifting his glass and taking a swallow of his drink. "And of course," he continued, "you wouldn't know that in her junior year a rejected fraternity boy started the rumor that she was either a lesbian or frigid. The only thing that stopped the lesbian thing from sticking to her was her friendship with Lisa
Pontini
, who was dating the president of the kid's fraternity. Lisa was so far from being a lesbian, and so loyal to Meredith, that she made the kid a laughingstock with the help of her current boyfriend. The part about being frigid stuck though. They nicknamed her the 'ice queen' at school. When she finished grad school, and came back here, the nickname got whispered, but she was so damned beautiful that it added to her allure because it made her a challenge. Besides, showing up with Meredith Bancroft on your arm, looking at that face of hers across a restaurant table, was such an ego boost that you didn't much care that she wouldn't sleep with you."

Stuart waited, hoping Farrell would finally take the bait and start asking questions, which would have been a tip-off about his true feelings, but Farrell either had no feelings for her—or else he was too smart to risk giving any hints that might cause her attorney to tell her that her husband was definitely in love with her and that she could tear up that document without risk of having him carry out his threats. Irrationally convinced the latter was still the case, Stuart said idly, "Can I ask you something?"

"You can
ask,"
Farrell emphasized.

"What made you decide to double-team her today with two attorneys, particularly two attorneys whose methods are notoriously heavy-handed?"